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The funny thing about dying is that you forget the strangest things. Jason can remember the distinct smell of his old apartment (macadamia and weed), but he can’t remember the plot of some of his favorite books. It’s nearly a gift, being able to read some of his favorites for the first time again, something he had agonizingly wished for the first few times he reread them.
It almost makes up for dying.
Jason turns the page, eyes nearly aching from the fervent scanning of the page as he reads, fingers itching to turn the page again, to read faster, to go faster.
This book in particular is a blessing to read again for the first time, the first time being for school, a stopping and starting of assigned reading that killed any desire to actually read the book. Luckily, the genuine literature of it is so profound that the linguist in him had practically salivated at each passage.
“She could see the burning light on Max’s eggshell face and even taste the human flavor of his words. The course of his survival was related, piece by piece, as if he were cutting each part out of him and presenting it on a plate.”
God, he wants to save these quotes in bottles and drink them for breakfast.
Part of him wished, wishes, will wish, that he could write, be a famous writer with internationally known literary works, be able to bottle the beauty of a blade of grass and describe in paragraphs how the wind moves through it like blades through butter.
In another life, a different life, where things had been handled differently, maybe he did.
He’ll never know.
Turning the page again, he’s shocked out of his reading trance by a slip of paper falling onto the floor, a soft fluttering that breaks his concentration and makes his entire body tense in preparation of the sound.
Scooping a hand down, he plucks the slip between two fingers, twisting his wrist around to get a better view of it.
It isn’t a paper, it’s a polaroid.
Of Tim.
The grainy film has somehow managed to capture a perfect action shot, Robin flying through the air, arms outstretched in open waters as he soars, the perfect little angel.
The thought sours in Jason’s mind, bitter jealousy soaking into his bones. The feeling leaves him dusty, pulling apart at the seams and a sticky smooth texture in his mouth that puts him off.
He’d almost forgotten, the belt wrapped around his ribs that squeezed with every breath, the exclusion from his own family that steals the air from his lungs.
Forgetting seems to be a common theme in his life, forever the outlier in every equation.
He doesn’t belong.
It’s a lonely existence, never quite fitting anywhere. It’s very similar to a floater friend, constantly drifting, never quite fitting into a specific group or social norm. His perception of life is slightly skewed, just the smallest bit off, and yet it’s like he’s constantly falling a beat behind everyone else, missing a step that leaves him falling inches behind, constantly out of sync with the rest of the world.
He hasn’t been jealous of Tim for a while, hasn’t felt that burning rage that boils into green at the edge of his vision since they talked it out on a rooftop over chili dogs during patrol almost three years ago.
The bitter anger has faded through time, a wisp of a memory he used to sink into like a hot bath after a long day. All that’s left behind is a bone deep sadness sinking into his soul, pressing against his skin like a tattoo, a branding to forever remind him how detached from everyone else he truly is.
Six years seemed to pass in the six months he took his extended dirt nap, and time keeps moving even as Jason stands still, watching everyone continue to move on without him, grow and learn and love without him.
He’ll never catch back up.
Spontaneously, he crumples up the polaroid, throwing it with everything in him across the room.
It lands with a quiet brush against the ground, an anticlimactic ending for the rising hysteria in his gut that curls him up from the inside out, a pillbug against the window, staring out at a world he has been forcibly removed from once and will be removed from again.
Death will come for him again, cradling him in its icy hands as he casts longing looks backwards. He’s been warmed once, rising from ground that had embraced him with the most welcoming arms he had ever fallen into, and he won’t follow the same fate again.
The thing about dying and coming back to life is that you know with absolute certainty that the world can and will go on without you, that nothing is truly changed by your death.
For a race that’s entire dream and mission in life is to be remembered, to create ripples, to last, to make something that will be permanent, the realization is a daunting one.
Jason curls up alone, against a cold window, a perfect mirror of the man he will be, the boy he once was, the death he once met, the death he will meet again.
He’s been dead before, will be dead again, and every second here is wasted, every moment alive is coveted, stolen.
Unneeded, seeing how easily he had been replaced originally.